For most students, studying is a chore that they’re rather not deal with, but new emotion based software could be set to help them learn that little bit easier.
Education isn’t the problem for those who want to learn. Gaining new knowledge is is great and if they want to pass exams,for most, it’s also a requirement. However, most courses and study programs can be extremely tedious for those enrolled in them, making studying an impossible, unentertaining yet necessary component of the day. On days when you don’t feel like studying, then, wouldn’t it be useful to have something that kicks you right back into ‘learning mode’? It’s likely that it’s for this very reason that researchers at the North Carolina State University have created a software system that tailors your learning to your feelings.
Called JavaTutor, the software, which was created by the North Carolina State University, reads a users emotions and adjusts their learning accordingly. How it does this is by utilising extremely advanced facial recognition. JavaTutor includes Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox, or CERT for short, which is the part of the software that reads the emotions. CERT can read if a user is confident, frustrated, angry or focused on the learning and not only does JavaTutor use these emotions to change and improve the learning, it also adjusts the education provided to users based on skill level too.
In addition to this, JavaTutor is also said to provide motivational messages based on how well a student is doing, for example if a student gets something wrong and appears frustrated by it, the software will offer up “Keep at it – the more mistakes you make, the more you learn.” to help them. On the other hand, a simple “Good job” is offered if a student is assessed to be confident and successful.
JavaTutor is still a work in progress but initial testing seems to be going well as North Carolina State University have said that 85 percent of the time, JavaTutor resulted in noticeably improved learning for the 65 students who partook in the evaluation.
We’ll keep you updated on plans they have to release JavaTutor to the public.
Source : GigaOm
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